The Final Choice
by SerenityFalconNormandy
Summary: Written for the Dragon Age Reddit Weekly Writing Prompt: A memory from your character's childhood that helped shape them into who they are. Gwyneth tells Morrigan about the first time she ever took a life.


"Why do you keep acting like this, Morrigan? Trying to get me to kill a little boy, I'm sure you would have told me to leave the mages in the tower to the mercy of the Templars. Why are their lives worth so _little_ to you?"

"This is a war, Gwyneth. You cannot save everyone, nor should you try to. Lives will need to be sacrificed in the end to stop the Teyrn and the Archdemon. I do not yet trust that you can strike the blow yourself." The rustle of a turning page punctuated her cruel tone.

"You know, Morrigan, I killed before I was a Warden." Gwyneth stirred the coals of the witch's fire, lifting tired eyes to the other woman.

"I doubt the spiders and other _pests_ in that tower of yours count," Morrigan sniffed as she turned another page in her mother's grimoire.

Gwyn snorted. "That's what you think of me and the Circles? Let me tell you, the Circle isn't for the faint of heart. Only someone who sees it from the outside, or thinks like Wynne, would think it's a place that makes soft, obedient, frightened little mages."

"Are you saying it doesn't?" An ebon brow raised.

"Do I seem soft, obedient, or frightened? As for my fellow Circle mages, a handful of them held off blood mages and abominations for two weeks or more before we arrived and cleared Kinloch Hold while the Templars wept, prayed, and waited for more arms to Annul the tower."

Morrigan tilted her head to the flame-haired elf, conceding the point.

"Circle mages become familiar with death _all_ too soon, Morrigan."

"So what did you kill then? A rabbit or something on your trip from the Circle to Ostagar? A chicken in the tower's kitchens?"

"A man. An apostate hedge mage the Templars dragged in."

Morrigan drew back, surprised. Gwyn drew in a shaky breath, and left off poking at Morrigan's fire. She picked up her lute and started plucking at it, the notes loud enough to drown her voice for the rest of her camp, but not for the other woman's ears.

She could see curiosity glittering in the other mage's eyes, and ground out, "Alistair is the only other person who knows this, and I'd like to keep it that way."

"I agree to your requirement."

"It was when I was eleven. I was helping Solona in the infirmary-"

"How were you helping in the infirmary? You are no healer."

Gwyn shot Morrigan an annoyed glance, "I already excelled at paralysis glyphs and sleep spells. Who better to help hold a patient still when a bone needed to be set, or assist when one of the little apprentices is ill and can't sleep because of a fever? Anyway. The Templars brought in the apostate mage, and he was brought to the infirmary to be healed before he was to be made Tranquil."

Gwyneth made a face, anger and helplessness chasing each other across her features, "They wanted him to be fully lucid and ready to be put to work before they branded him, you know? Why waste all that _valuable_ time where he could be earning coin for the _Chantry_ on him _convalescing_. They said he attacked them when they attempted to apprehend him, but even I knew better. Every mage working in the infirmary knows what defensive wounds from fighting off someone who's wearing plate and assaulting you look like."

Morrigan sat forward, an unusual note of concern making her voice harsher, "Gwyn-"

"It never happened to _me_ , Morrigan, but I… helped, after, once or twice. Sleep spells only. I never had to assist with the clean up or healing of the ones it happened to, but Solona did. She would wake up from awful nightmares, and I'd sit with her. We knew that their claim he attacked them was bullshit, in any case. They gave him a concussion bringing him in, too." Gwyn had given up any semblance of playing her lute, setting it to the side again.

"I'll assume the Circle is wise enough not to try and rush healing those," Morrigan murmured, shifting and pulling her cloak tighter about her shoulders.

"Quite. I volunteered to sit with him overnight to keep watch. While the Templars were breaking each other, he begged me to kill him. He said he'd rather be dead than Tranquil. Begged me, an eleven year old who hadn't seen the outside world in five years. I asked him to tell me his name, and to tell me every beautiful thing he could remember seeing while I waited for the Templar shift change."

"What did he tell you about?"

"Sunrise in the Frostbacks. Making friends with a squirrel outside a little village in the Free Marches before he was discovered and ran. He named it Lord Chitterly and it would eat nuts and dried fruit from his palm. The smell of the Storm Coast. When the shift changed, I wove a quick paralysis glyph around his heart, and waited until he was gone before I undid it. I waited another half hour, acting like I had nodded off before I raised the alarm and had them go for Solona."

"So tell me, Gwyneth, why did you do that?"

"He asked me to, and he was kind to me. If I had the choice, I never would have left Highever, but I also probably would have died to Arl Howe." She sighed and stood up, "I just want to be able to make the choice for how I die in the end, instead of having the weight of the Calling force my hand, like he did. He got to make his final choice. So many of us have had things forced upon us, destinies, or fate, or whatever one would call it, and not by choice."

As she turned to go back to her tent, Morrigan called to her, "Gwyneth."

"Yes?"

"Do you regret it? And what was his name?"

"I'll never regret it. Kieran deserved to go the way he wanted to."

* * *

Looking at the little male child she had just birthed, Morrigan was reminded of Gwyneth, oddly. Not Alistair, though she could see her child's father in him a little. The shape of his nose, a hint of him in the jawline. The Rivani woman who acted as her midwife helped her sit up, and placed her son on her chest.

She would not be the mother to him that Flemeth had been to her. He would be given love, and kindness. He would chart his own course, and she would not manipulate her precious child to her own designs. He would have the freedom to make his own choices for himself, like Gwyneth had wished for.

"He's a fine, healthy lad, mistress. What will you call him?"

Morrigan smiled, gold eyes going soft as she ran her fingers gently over the fine tuft of black hair. "Kieran."


End file.
